Israeli occupation authorities have reportedly decided on Wednesday not to hand over the body of cancer-stricken Palestinian prisoner Nasser Abu Hmeid who died yesterday due to medical negligence in Israeli prisons.
Israeli media reported that Israeli occupation war minister Benny Gantz decided not to hand over the body of Abu Hmeid to his family, forbidding his family from burying him and bidding him the last farewell in an honorable way.
The Israeli media claimed the decision is based on a previous amendment granting Israeli occupation the power to withhold the bodies of Palestinians killed by the Israeli occupation forces and Palestinian prisoners who died in Israeli prisons.
The Palestinian Commission of Detainees and ex-Detainees Affairs announced that 50-year-old Nasser Abu Hmeid died in Israeli Assaf Harofeh Hospital on Tuesday morning due to the deliberate medical negligence practiced by the Israeli prison administration against sick Palestinian detainees.
On Monday, Abu Hmeid was moved from the Ramleh prison clinic to the Assaf Harofeh Hospital after his health critically deteriorated.
The Commission said Abu Hmeid went into a coma last night, and that “he is taking his last breaths and he is expected to die at any moment.”
His mother and brother were also last night allowed to see him in the hospital following intervention from the Red Cross.
On Sunday, the Commission said that due to his critical condition, the doctors are giving Abu Hmeid large doses of painkillers in an attempt to control his pain, which puts him in a semi-coma almost all the time.
Israeli occupation arrested Abu Hmeid, from the Al-Amari refugee camp in Ramallah, in 2002 and sentenced him to seven life sentences and 50 years in prison.
Abu Hmeid was diagnosed with lung cancer in August 2021 after Israeli occupation authorities delayed the provision of medical examinations and treatment, according to prisoner groups.
He was suffering from pain for a long period before they agreed to do medical tests on him, according to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS).
By August the chest pain had become very intense, which is when they transferred him for tests and they found cancer which was discovered at a late stage and spread quickly.
Four other brothers of Nasser are in Israeli prisons: Nasr, 47, Sharif, 45, Mohammad, 38, and Islam, 35. ‘Israel’ has sentenced all of them to life.
Moreover, Israeli occupation forces shot dead a fifth brother, Abdul Meniem, in 1994. It also demolished the house of the family several times.
Before his death, Abu Nasser said, “I am heading to the end of the road, in peace, leaving behind a great people that will not forego my cause, and that of the prisoners.”
The prisoner groups said that Abu Hmeid was exposed to a slow death operation which is part of a systematic policy of medical negligence and delays in providing treatment, which all the prisoners are exposed to, not just Nasser.
The groups noted that ‘Israel’ adopts deliberate medical negligence with Palestinian detainees as a part of its policy to weaken them.
Since 1967, 233 Palestinian detainees have died inside Israeli prisons, 74 of them due to deliberate medical negligence, the prisoner groups confirmed today.
